So right now the race for the Republican presidential candidate is between Millard “Gordon-Gecko” Romney and Rick Perry. And today and tomorrow Mittens is taking it to Perry’s home turf:
Romney speaks this morning to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in San Antonio while Perry is elsewhere in the state raising money. The former Massachusetts governor has avoided taking direct swipes at the man who is now his chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination, but that’s starting to change.
It’s about a hundred and ten degrees in the shade down here Millard, enjoy.
Really, what difference does it make which one of them wins in the end? Both these creeps are going to do the same thing, trick the faithful into bowing their heads and closing their eyes in pious prayer while an army of conservative hit men cut taxes on zillionaires, run every social program they can get their hands on through a Koch owned chop shop and hand out the severed parts to more zillionaires, and continue with the right-wing class war against the rest of us any way they can. Because make no mistake, the kooky conservative rich and powerful are not satisfied with millions and billions, they want it all, every last cent, and there’s a long line of enablers whispering in their ear that God wants them to have it all. They don’t just want your social security – which is luring them like a giant over funded pension plan to a corporate radier – they don’t just want your unemployment benefits such as they are, or your worker’s comp and your vacation time and your two fifteen minute breaks. No, they feel they are entitled to all of it. This is what God wants.
It’s just despicable.
Someone help me understand what goes through the mind of a likely Republican voter with any critical thinking skills whatsoever? We tried conservative foreign policy in Iraq; it was a spectacular bloody failure costing a trillion dollars, thousands of lives and limbs, and still counting (And Obama’s efforts have been far more effective and literally magnitudes of order less expensive in every way measurable). We’ve tried conservative economic policy, slashing taxes and deregulating virtually every type of business. The end result of that was record deficits and the worst economic cluster-fuck since the days of Hoover.
What mental process is it that leads from those undisputed empirical facts of recent history above to the ineffable conclusion that the best way forward is to elect people promising to those very same things again and again?
There’s your problem right there. Critical thinking skills and religious conservatism are polar opposites.
Christians (and therefore most of the Republican party) are used to people telling them lies and what they want to hear. Sure they get upset about being lied to, but that (in their mind) is way better than having a black man as president.
… Obama’s efforts have been far more effective and literally magnitudes of order less expensive in every way measurable…
Haven’t run any cost-benefit analyses on the Afghanistan project lately, I gather.
And if damage to the US Constitution seems hard to measure, check in with yr blogmate Ed B for some tallies. :-P
Butler,
I don’t see how it matters. If Obama is doing similarly to Bush, it just makes the involvement worse, not better! Had he stayed out of Iraq, we could have finished with Afghanistan half a decade, a trillion or more dollars, and thousands of casualties sooner!
Frankly, I agree with Ed, who has noted more than once that Obama seems like Bush III. Obama has been a huge disappointment to me, even as I cringe and vow to vote for him in 2012, just to avoid voting for another Republican.
If evidence from the real world mattered to right-wing Christians, they wouldn’t be right-wing Christians.
Platitudes, talking points, and “First Principles”…also known as dogma.
Dogma is never subject to falsification by evidence.
I think ogremk5 hit it on the head. A “…a likely Republican voter with any critical thinking skills…” is an oxymoron.
Even those that aren’t particularly xtian (my father is one of them) have minimal critical thinking skills.
When confronted with unpleasant facts or concepts, my father goes out looking for “I wonder if this conservative principle is true” or “I wonder if this liberal principle is false”. Of course, he will find Faux News, various conservative websites, and his conservative friends that will all reassure him that conservative principle is true (or the liberal principle is false) because they say so (or provide some vague concept that might be true in an extremely simplistic world).
I have never run into Republican voter that has ever asked the question “I wonder what is true”. Until they learn to ask the question correctly, they are destined to arrive at the predictable destination that their confirmation biased question is going to lead them.
Yeah, good point. The set is comprised of self selecting members.
Well, he didn’t start Afghanistan. Based on Libya and OBL and the pirate thing, it’s a fair wager he might have done better.
I think things are the way they are because none of the empirical evidence matters unless the debate is about issues. Political debates are not about issues, they’re about rabble rousing window dressing. They have better window dressing because it’s very nearly the only thing they have.
To put it another way, you can’t lose a fight on the issues if your opponent never has a chance to talk about them because you’ve steered the conversation onto emotional, visceral topics and stuck them with the role of a straw man you can beat at your leisure.